The ability to collect information on Web 2.0 is a definite advantage to competitive intelligence researchers. Lately, Google has been improving their capabilities to provide real-time search results as a part of the tool’s broad set of web results. Google’s efforts has not scared off tools such as LeapFish, Collecta or Addictomatic from the real-time search market.
Wowd is another player in the market that intends to carve out their own space in the industry.
The search application positions itself as a way to “Discover what’s popular right now”. Here is a look at what Wowd offers on the web. (Wowd also provides a downloadable application.)
The tool is divided into three distinct parts.
1 - Hot List
Wowd provides real-time results from the top stories on the web. Figure 1 presents the top results on the web on February 14th, 2010.
Figure 1: Wowd’s Hot List
2 - Search
The search option allows users to retrieve the most relevant hits on social networking platforms. Figure 2 illustrates the results given for the query, “Toyota Prius”.
Figure 2: Real-Time Results For “Toyota Prius”
Search results are updated constantly and can be sorted by what is available in real-time, “Best now” and what is available on the web, “Best all time”.
The functionalities that are common to both parts of Wowd are:
- Sharing Content
- Reporting Content As Inappropriate
- Tagging Content
- Filtering Content By Keyword
- Filtering Content By Sources
The functionalities are available with each listed result as highlighted in yellow in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Wowd’s Content Functionalities
3 - My Pages
The “My Pages” option allows users to add pages to the Wowd application to be indexed. This option is solely available through the downloadable version.
Wowd is available at www.wowd.com
Seeking to expand your knowledge of internet search tools? Learn more at Intelegia’s seminar, “Effective Online Research Strategies“.
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